Ken Lucci 0:24

Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of Ground Transportation Podcast. We are in the ground transportation podcast studio with my, um, lovely and talented,

James Blain 0:36

Oh boy.

Ken Lucci 0:38

co-hosts James Blaine from PAX Training, the best chauffeur training, best customer service training in the industry. How are you. James?

James Blain 0:45

I'm, I'm good. It's Friday. Best day of our week. We live for this.

Ken Lucci 0:49

Oh, it is a, it is a great day today. Um, Fridays are my favorite day. Now, not too many people know this, but I do work Saturdays only. So because I, I don't know about you, but I'm, I mean, you get the hockey, the kids, the wife, the whole thing. But I find that I can get more done on in four hours on a Saturday

James Blain 1:07

No calls. No, I I have the same thing. I find

Ken Lucci 1:10

But I also. I think Friday is a good day to decompress because as we get to the summertime, less people are, are, do wanna do hard, uh, appointments with us. But listen, today I want to talk about something that is near and dear to me that's concerning me in the, industry because, you know, when we look at Facebook and we see operators complaining about, well, their airport transfers are down, do you, you you hear that?

James Blain 1:38

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 1:39

Okay. So.

James Blain 1:40

is a real point of contention and, and especially on the chauffeur services side of the industry.

Ken Lucci 1:45

Right. So on, you know, listen, at the end of the day, I maintain that airport transfers are the milk and bread of the industry. all Right. If we're a grocery store, which is, you know, my family background, um, if we're a grocery store, the milk and bread is what gets, what gets them in the door to sell the higher, the higher price stuff, okay? Number one, I think we do a terrible job as an industry. Telling our airport transfer customer everything else that we can do for them. That's number one.

James Blain 2:19

Oh yeah, that's a, that's a small business issue across the board, right?

Ken Lucci 2:22

Right, exactly. You know, the assumption is, well, it's on my website that I do wine tours. Yeah. They're not sitting on your website. Right. They're not. They're not sitting on your website. In your website. So number one, if you look at, if you accept the fact that airport transfers are a necessity to get 'em in the store, they're the milk and the bread. We have to be competitive. Now, this is a true statistic per the GBTA. When you look at corporate America, 67% of the reason why corporate America uses chauffered services is for the standard airport transfer. Okay-, Now, you know, 25% use this for motor coach and group and meeting and a bunch of other stuff, right? That they do maybe once or twice a year.

James Blain 3:08

But,

Ken Lucci 3:08

but this.

James Blain 3:09

your entry point to get there.

Ken Lucci 3:10

airport transfer is vitally important. Now I will share. That's GBTA.

James Blain 3:14

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 3:15

other thing I will share with you is based on the work we've done, every single company that we have reviewed out of the 270 plus companies, maybe 200 and. Maybe two 30 were chauffeur companies, but of every company that we have reviewed, the ones who have turned their back on on airport transfer and said, oh, I'm getting out of the sedan and SUV business to a company. Every single one of them, their revenue has dropped off. Now, I'm not talking about the ones that made the strategic decision to pivot towards school and university contracts or corporate or corporate shuttle contracts, Right. That's literally changing your entire mindset. You are no longer a supermarket. You are a black Angus butcher shop. I love it. Right. But, but if you want to do business with corporate America. You need to understand that 67% of the reason why they use chauffeur transportation is to, or from the airport with it's either their, their high level managers or their executives. So you, if you accept that reality, you have a couple of choices, Okay. Number one, drop your pants and, and, and, and go low price.

James Blain 4:34

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 4:34

That, That's, a technical finance term. Dropping your pants.

James Blain 4:37

offic. Yeah, the unofficial technical. The

Ken Lucci 4:40

The unofficial technical, right? So drop your pants to no nothing or, or, or know what your costs are. I maintain that you can't stay in business doing airport transfers unless you're making more than 30 to 35% gross margin on the trip. So what does that mean? That means that if you charge a hundred bucks, 35 bucks. Is devoted to pay your overhead, to pay you to make a profit, right? believe it or not, you're gonna spend 60 to 65 bucks to have the vehicle that does the work, pay the driver repair and maintenance fleet insurance, et cetera. Okay. The problem I see with airport transfers going down is not the fact that people, that, that people are not traveling. Domestic air travel grows at 4% a year, compounded annually. International travel is growing at 5% a year, so it's a proverbial hockey stick compared to a standard business growth is about 2%. Okay, so my answer to operators is. Do not shy away from or turn your back on airport. number one, triple down on who is using you Right. now. Example, if if, if you've got a pharmaceutical company using you, guess what? They're not the only pharmaceutical company in the world. You create a use case as to why pharmaceutical companies like us and use us for airport travel.

James Blain 6:18

but real quick before we move on, 'cause this is something that Maurice talked about. This is something we've seen episode and episode. Again,

Ken Lucci 6:26

Mm-hmm.

James Blain 6:26

not forget that if you are a black car operator that has larger vehicles, you have a superpower because guess who typically doesn't ride in the bus? The CEO, COO, the guys that have all the power, all the control, all the ability, right? They're typically not the one that they're putting on the bus. So if you are operating black car and you've got the airport and you've got those guys and you've got them in the vehicle, that is your ability to be able to take just a couple airport runs or even a couple runs there and convert that into a major client. There's

Ken Lucci 7:05

Absolutely.

James Blain 7:06

no lack, absolutely no lack of companies where it's, you know, we started out, they were looking for a higher level service to do this, and then they had a group move, then they contacted us for this. The next thing we knew, because they were so happy with how we took care of their executives, we're taking care of all the business.

Ken Lucci 7:22

Okay, So, let me, let me go down this road.

James Blain 7:24

yeah. I, I wanted to kind of tee this one up 'cause it really lines up with where we're going.

Ken Lucci 7:29

if you're doing business with a lawyer, they're not the only lawyer in town, create the electronic use case as to why le more lawyers use you than anybody else. Sell existing clients. More things, to your point, if they took an airport transfer with you last year in April. Call them in March, email them in March, Follow up.

James Blain 7:53

up.

Ken Lucci 7:53

So, so to me it's tripling down on your strategy of who's using me now. Let me find more of them and then let me go deep with those clients. Okay. So every single large corporation that is moving to and from the executives to and from the airports. They certainly are going places that you can also provide service to out of town. So, uh, a good friend of mine in the business calls it selling the fries. Do you want fries with that?

James Blain 8:24

Yep. Yep.

Ken Lucci 8:25

to me it's, it's looking at every transfer and not saying, Oh. I'm down in trips. Who gives a shit if you are up in revenue?

James Blain 8:35

Yep.

Ken Lucci 8:36

Right, winning. so again, it's that whole volume versus revenue To me, the airport transfers accept the reality that. 67% of the reason Corporate America uses us is for airport. That's our entree into Into EM employee incentive programs during the week, it's groups and meetings. It's buses, it's it's vans for training. It's everything. It's the board meeting. It's the out of town travel, so you cannot give it up. I hear people un unfair. Well, I'm just not going to compete. Good for you. Your market share is gonna go down. If, if, again, unless you wanna do a total pivot, because it's your entry point. The the second thing with airport transfers is when we did the state of the industry report, we researched airline travel. I read every single airline analyst report. By the way, don't invest in stocks and airline. But anyway, the analyst reports all of them talk about, number one, the growth in first class customers.

James Blain 9:36

Yep.

Ken Lucci 9:37

Now, believe it or not, 60, 67% of, of, uh, business class, of first class seats during the week. They're frequent corporate travelers on the weekends. Guess who they are? They're wealthy, private individuals.

James Blain 9:52

Yep.

Ken Lucci 9:53

70% of air travel is done for personal reasons, 70%, 16% is corporate employees turning in their receipts. They're traveling for corporate business. 8% is uh, for, small business people, right, that are traveling for whatever reason. But the remainder is personal travel. So we do a terrible job as an industry. Oh, we're competing with Uber, No, you're not.

James Blain 10:20

If you're competing with Uber, you blew it. Right? If you're competing with, and, and I've said this time and time again, right? The whole like. If you are trying to compete with A TNC, you can't.

Ken Lucci 10:32

You can't compete. You can't, you can't.

James Blain 10:34

to us. It's a volume play, and here's the thing. If you are really going to be any a different class guys, this is the reason we exist. This reason Pax is in business, right? Because you've got to give that person an experience they're never gonna forget. And by the way, one of the biggest missed opportunities I see in this industry, whoever goes and does this software automatically, right? Limo anywhere, whoever does it, send me the check when you get it figured out. But what I would want, if I got in the business tomorrow and I was doing a lot of airport work. would have a rule that says, Hey, if we know this is a first time traveler with us and they're doing any kind of trip with us, first time with us, as soon as they get outta the vehicle, if it's not a corporate client and it's their first trip, I'm gonna send an email and I'm gonna say, thank you so much for riding with us. We'd love the opportunity to make all of your travel needs super easy. Here are the main ways that we help our customers, and I would take the top. Trips that I do for people and I would say, Hey, we can help you with, you know, your weddings. We can help you with your nights out. We can help you with corporate, whatever it turns out in your business. Those biggest ones are, because I cannot tell you, and Ken, I don't know if you see this, but I see so many missed opportunities where like you're saying, well, they don't know what I do and nobody bothers to tell 'em they're not gonna reach your website,

Ken Lucci 11:51

no. they're also not gonna sit on Facebook. I mean, they're, to me, to me, it's not about showing off that limo bus. It's about. Happy people In the limo bus, a pic, a picture of the happy people and what are the upcoming concerts. So, so back to the airports.

James Blain 12:08

medal.

Ken Lucci 12:08

Back, back to the airports. I can tell you that when the, the, if, if you drill down and do what we do, and you read the analyst reports from the TNCs. 85% of the trips the TNCs take are less than 25 bucks and 25 minutes. Okay? So if I am an operator today, I'm focusing my marketing of airport transfers 45 minutes away from the airports in the wealthiest zip codes. And I'm looking at the corporate parks where they are. And the corporate buildings. And where do those people live?

James Blain 12:48

Right.

Ken Lucci 12:49

I'm marketing in the wealthiest zip codes within a ring 45 minutes out. Why? Because I can guarantee you at four o'clock in the morning, 45 minutes away from an urban area, you are not gonna find an Uber driver guaranteed. And that's the Achilles heel. 16%. By the way, only 16% of airport transfers. From people's homes to their primary airport. 16% are done by TNCs. Okay. Why? Because they cannot direct, they cannot control, they cannot guarantee that they're gonna have a vehicle there. We can, okay, so to me, I would implore operators to, number one, know what your cost structure is and don't be a pig. Pigs get slaughtered. But if you know what, if you know your cost structure. Uh, you know what? You can afford the lowest price you can afford to do the airport trip. And I'm not saying call five competitors and cut prices by 20% 'cause you're gonna go out of business. But I'm saying know what your cost structure is, so know what it costs you. I know companies that charge a little bit more for late night or early, early morning pickups at the airport or. Meet and greets, et cetera. But be careful, you know how much you, I don't want to term how much you, you, you, nickel and dime. Right? I would, I would work the hardest. Not for the person that uses airport. Once because they're visiting my city. I would work the hardest for someone that travels repeatedly 10 times a a year, 20 times a year. Or they have corporate people road warriors out there. Okay. That are, and I would work my ass off price wise for them,

James Blain 14:33

but walk you back a second though, Ken, walk you back a second. Right? Because you already set that up earlier

Ken Lucci 14:39

Mm-hmm.

James Blain 14:40

I'm targeting the wealthy zip codes. I'm, you have got, you want to be intentional and I'm sure we'll, we'll go more in depth on it in a second, but there are so many people out there that I'm gonna PPC. And, uh, pay, right? Pay per click advertising. For those that aren't familiar with that term, I'm gonna basically make it so that every time someone searches the airport code on Google, I pop up and then, and then I'm gonna be the one. Look, if

Ken Lucci 15:04

No. No,

James Blain 15:05

your business the way you

Ken Lucci 15:07

no.

James Blain 15:07

your business isn't by giving every single person in your entire city a flyer. We've talked on it this before, we'll talk on it again. Not every single person is your customer, and

Ken Lucci 15:17

Nope.

James Blain 15:18

purely a volume play. What I would really care about is how do I get those travelers that have that corporate link that I can then say, Hey, you know, we, we are so happy to take care of the airport. We'd love to be able to take care of you for work, to take care if, you've got first class travelers, if you've got business class travelers and you can then grab the rest of their work, now you've got a way to ascend that.

Ken Lucci 15:42

Mm-hmm.

James Blain 15:42

so many cases you're gonna get one interaction and then there's no opportunity to ascend it. So I think what Ken said earlier is super important here and that you've gotta make this intentional. Your goal is not to get every single person to the airport, try to get all of them. It's to try and get the right ones so you can ascend it and grow your business with it.

Ken Lucci 16:04

So, so let's talk about who the corporate travelers are. Okay. Number the GD uh, GBTA. We did, we got the list, we drilled down to the, to the top 100 industries. Okay. Believe it or not. 38% of business class passengers are technical support people for essay, for software or hardware. So let's break it down. Largest employ largest employers in your area should know who you are and what you do. Your co uh, public companies, 100% Public companies. Okay. Doctors and lawyers, without question.

James Blain 16:41

Easy.

Ken Lucci 16:41

pharmaceutical companies without question. at the end of the day, knowing, and, and I, I, I agree with you. PPC is like a shotgun blast.

James Blain 16:52

Oh.

Ken Lucci 16:52

You need to have today. You need to have a sniper rifle. True story. Client of mine called and said, you know, I just opened up. I can't believe they called me. They're a Fortune 100 company. They were using such and such of a a network. Didn't have metal in the city and they don't own any metal, as a matter of fact. And, and the guy left the, they had three service failures and they just book with me. I said, okay, back up, back up. I'm happy you did that. I'm happy you got that. But here's what I think you, I would recommend number one. Make sure that you have it. Mark that This is a status, one VIP, whatever you want to call it, because, and, and put your best people on it. Then

James Blain 17:39

A level game.

Ken Lucci 17:41

a level game, and then, and then ask his executive assistant, who's searched for you, by the way? Who found you right. Ask if you can come down or ask if you can schedule a 10 minute zoom meeting to go through everything else you do. Find out who the head of HR is because they're always looking for places and people to take. Uh, take out employee, take out their employees. Ask who the head of procurement is. Ask how many total travelers do they have. And which, what cities do they go in? so, PPC to me goes long. What I want you to do is go deep, right? I want you to go deep, and chances are that that wealthy couple that uses you four times a year, guess what? The zip code, where they live in. Guaranteed. there are other people that travel four, five times a year, guaranteed. You, they belong to the same country club, guaranteed. They get, the wives get their hair done twice a week at the same place. Right. Or the, the, there's uh highend travel agent that they book, I mean, these are not Carnival Cruise, $300, 10 day cruises. They're going on,

James Blain 18:58

Well, and they gotta get creative

Ken Lucci 18:59

deep. They have to get creative

James Blain 19:02

to, if you have that lawyer that you've worked with or you have that couple, or you have, that, you could easily send them something that says, give a friend or family member the gift of peace of mind when they're traveling off their first trip with us, right? Whatever that might be.

Ken Lucci 19:19

Yep.

James Blain 19:19

way to tell

Ken Lucci 19:21

Yep,

James Blain 19:21

about it. Give them a way

Ken Lucci 19:22

yep.

James Blain 19:23

that, because birds of a feather flock together. We all know that.

Ken Lucci 19:27

give them an employee discount when the employees are traveling on Saturdays and Sundays. You know, when I own, I, when I was an operator, it used to drive me crazy. Not really, but every, every Saturday and Sunday, we were nuts on weddings, right? But then I would look at all, I would look at the sedans and SUVs just sitting There lonely, right? Sunday is the new travel day, it's the heaviest travel day, but employees that may take a Friday off and go. out of town, give them an employee discount and, and, and tie it to the volume of the corporate accounts. So don't just go long and try PPCP. To me, PPC is papering the whole community

James Blain 20:05

Right.

Ken Lucci 20:05

it's a losing proposition. Go deep. So when I looked at this, when I said to this guy. Listen, did you do what I asked you to do? Which is recommended, which is go see the ea. Okay? Go see the executive assistant. Say, listen, I'm gonna be in your area. I'd like to stop in. How did the trip go? Always, follow up with new clients, but then tell me something. Is he the only one that travels? I mean, chances are no. Right. So, uh, I, I never forget a, when I was an operator, a client, uh, and another operator had said to me, oh, you'll never get to do business with tech data. You, They, you know, they, they buy only on price and they use an out of town network. So what did we do? We called the ea. One of the EAs that we, that we knew worked there from, even back in the day we had LinkedIn. So we said, listen, we'd like to come over and we'd like to show you the latest executive transportation vehicles that we just put into the fleet, and I'd like to sponsor a coffee break in the morning. Okay, now.

James Blain 21:08

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 21:09

She was nice enough. It, would help if you were referred by someone, but she was nice enough to say, of course, come on over. We lined up a brand new Escalade, a brand new, uh, sprinter with executive seating. And then believe it or not, we had a limo bus and, one of the operators, like, they'll never use that. I go there first thing, that's where we had the coffee.

James Blain 21:29

but if they don't know you have it, they're sure as hell not gonna use

Ken Lucci 21:32

We put the coffee in the bar and it looked in the, in the limo. bus. And guess what? They u, the head of HR came and they're like, Oh, wow. We want to use that. We have an employee incentive program and we do a dine around. We do a dine around every, every month we do one dine round for one department. Can we use this?

James Blain 21:52

four of those D rounds.

Ken Lucci 21:53

on a Thursday night. Yeah. I think the limo bus will be available on Thursday night. But you know what, if we didn't, going back to the airport transfers, if we didn't sharpen our pencil and ask the question. You know, is he the only one who is traveling? We wouldn't have gotten that. So, you know, the message to me for every operator who's listening to this is if you are getting frustrated that you think your airport business is dropping, Then. you need to quadruple down. You need to look at who's using you, see if there are any other travelers. See if they're traveling in any other city. Listen, you know, we, we're dropping your boss off at the airport. I wanted you to know that we're part of a global network. Can I provide you the same level of service in another city? Watch what happens to your profits when you add one leg to the round trip. addition to that, if you've got one law firm or one doctor's practice, guess what? They're not the only lawyer or the only doctor out there. I. Put it on your website that don't use their name, but more law firms use us than any other company. Here is why, and just list the value proposition. So if you see the airports to the taxis and TNCs, I, I predict the, the industry's gonna be in big trouble.

James Blain 23:08

Well, and let's, let's take a second because you've dropped a ton of gems, right? I feel like we're in Snow White. We just came outta the mind. We got all the diamonds of gems, right?

Ken Lucci 23:18

wait a minute. Shout, out to Gem Limousine in New Jersey. Joe Gino, he also owns strawberries. The greatest pizza place and the Greatest Wings. I love to go see them because Betley has a girlfriend there. Her name is Soy. She's a French bulldog. But then Joe always takes me to strawberries. But, but to your point. Sorry. I digress. I, I, I'm sorry

James Blain 23:39

Here's so a couple things, right? I wanna start at the beginning. dropped LinkedIn for two seconds and we have been talking about how do you find the other lawyers? How do you find the other doctors, guys you can go get on LinkedIn? I. You can go connect with your customers, especially look, in a lot of cases you are the ambassador for your brand. As the owner, get on there, start connecting with people, start looking at who their connections are, start figuring that out. The other

Ken Lucci 24:07

Hundred percent ask for referrals.

James Blain 24:09

for referrals.

Ken Lucci 24:10

if they love you, if their boss loves you, don't give the boss's name. Just call the EA and say, listen, I'm not gonna put you on a list, but can I ask you a favor can I have somebody email you for a reference on us? Of course you can. All right, now, don't put 'em on a list. You, reference lists are kind of passe, right? don't put, don't put the fact that IBM uses us on your website. All you're doing there is now some idiot who's low price than you is gonna go grab it. But I, think a personal, a personal recommendation, I. do that all the time. people send me recommendations all the time.

James Blain 24:45

a lot of this is if you are going after corporate America, you want to have conversations. And I will share a story. When I had my very first business, my dad and I were out and my dad was talking to someone and he starts, you know, it literally, they talk for two seconds. So who's the head of procurement? How do you guys find your services for this and that? And me being a new business owner. Was Dead Rock Dad. You can't just ask that kind of stuff. That's too bold. You gotta get there. And I was a dumbass, right?

Ken Lucci 25:16

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Say, say that. again. Please. Say that again. Say that

James Blain 25:19

made Ken's life, right? That soundbite will be used over and over. I was a but. But here's the thing, right? I didn't know any better. I had this limiting belief. You guys will hear me say that. 'cause I found that a lot of times. It's me that holds the business back. It's my beliefs that hold the business back. I had this limiting belief at the time that I couldn't just go ask, Hey, who's in charge of that? Hey, what are you doing for that? Hey, are you guys happy with what you're doing? Hey, if I could provide more value, if I could give you something that's above and beyond what you've ever had before and I was willing to let you try it for free, would you guys be willing to do it right? I had this limiting belief you couldn't go and do that, and I will tell you. That couldn't be further from the truth. Now, is there a right and a wrong way to do it? Absolutely. We've talked time and time again how coming in up to someone at a trade show and interrupting a conversation will drive 'em nuts. But that's not to say that you're not gonna go up to someone and say, Hey, I, I'd love to see if there's an opportunity I work in your area. I'd love to help you out.

Ken Lucci 27:27

your, your father's obviously read How to Win Friends and Influence People.

James Blain 27:31

Absolutely.

Ken Lucci 27:33

I was it Zig Ziglar that wrote that book?

James Blain 27:35

I wanna say that's Dale Carnegie.

Ken Lucci 27:37

Dale, you're right. It was Dale Carnegie. Okay. So, back in the day. every life insurance sales person okay. Had to read that book. And if you've ever been sold life insurance, those sons of bitches will get more shit out of you, in the, in 30 seconds. They're like, they've got, they know my, my way size. They, they, they know my eight last four digits of my social.

James Blain 28:02

you, what you

Ken Lucci 28:03

Right. That's the training. But so what your father was doing is weaving it into just general conversation. But to me, okay, so, so let's just talk about? if you are already doing business with one lawyer in a 10 lawyer practice, do you think you've got enough juice in that practice to say to the EA who books you, you know, what? we'd love to offer you the best prices possible corporate account for all of your travelers, for all of your, your partners. But is there anybody else who travels? We'd like to add their home, home address right to your account, and that way I can give you the best possible pricing. So, you know, to me.

James Blain 28:45

too, Ken. You can take a play outta the medical sales book and you can say, Hey, you know, John, we've, we've done tons of business with you. You know, I I, I don't know if your partners would be interested, but I'd love to have an opportunity to kinda share what we do with them. You know, would you mind if I bring in lunch for you and all your

Ken Lucci 28:59

Oh, food cells.

James Blain 29:00

you just

Ken Lucci 29:01

Food sells.

James Blain 29:02

Day and I, I'd be happy to, to come by and, and no Pitch. I just, just give 'em that, let 'em know what we do and,

Ken Lucci 29:09

So let's back up a step. Do you remember, do you remember the name Otis Spunkmeyer?

James Blain 29:13

I know the name. Yeah, the

Ken Lucci 29:15

Oh wait. Whoa, whoa. The cookies. Okay. so this is a true story. This is the story. So, so this is one of my wacky ideas and there's a, there's a woman named Shelly Taylor, who works for me, worked for me, is at ambassador, still works for me on, on and off. She's been, she's take care of Bentley and we bought an Otis Spunkmeyer cookie maker.

James Blain 29:37

Ooh.

Ken Lucci 29:38

Okay. And you could, you bought you, like you bought the oven and.

James Blain 29:43

baked cookies, right?

Ken Lucci 29:44

And, and you bought the oven and then what? Then you got like a case of frozen dough. Right? So,

James Blain 29:52

like little pellets you put in there,

Ken Lucci 29:53

right? So we would do, we would basically make a list of everywhere we wanted to drop those. Okay. And we would have a chauffeur bring and we did a nice job with it, with a box of cookies and a paper cube that said ambassador Limousine. And it was.

James Blain 30:12

refill on the bottom right. As soon

Ken Lucci 30:13

Correct,

James Blain 30:14

call for the refill.

Ken Lucci 30:15

correct. On the bottom of the paper cube, it said for more paper cubes call, the, call our reservation line. And we sent a driver row with them. So, so food works And you're right. Food. If you wanna know what other industries do to break in when they're either cold calling or break the ice, so to speak, it's food.

James Blain 30:34

And it

Ken Lucci 30:34

It's bringing food. It, it works. every time. Uh, somebody said to me the other day, well, you know, you can't just walk into office buildings. You know what, but you can. in every suburban office park out there. I get a filling done, right? And, and I'm looking and there's like seven orthopedic surgeons. There's an ophthalmologist all in the same medical community. I mean, We deal with an A CPA and he says to me, Ken, is there a decent limo company down here? Because the family, and I gotta go to BWI, which is like two hours from here. So of course I call one of my clients, right? And I said, listen, take care of this guy. He's my accountant. So my whole point on the airport thing is I honestly believe, first of all, there are ebbs and flows of Every business.

James Blain 31:20

Every business.

Ken Lucci 31:21

But instead of fighting for the shrinking pie, which is corporate America, and I'm gonna do affiliate work for the three or four or five networks, right? How about you literally dig where your gold is? Look at your existing clients. Go back three years in Limo Anywhere and figure out who has not used you, and send them a card that says, Hey, we miss you. If you've got any travel coming up. Here's $20 off a round trip. Okay. Whatever the offer is that you wanna do, just get them back in the car

James Blain 31:59

And don't mass email it. Don't make it don't. Right guys, emails

Ken Lucci 32:03

sniper shop.

James Blain 32:04

like we

Ken Lucci 32:05

shop,

James Blain 32:05

about on a previous episode. When your dispatchers aren't doing anything, go have some cards. Write 'em up, throw a stamp on it, drop it in the mail, Anything you can do to personalize and anything you can do ideally to start a conversation.

Ken Lucci 32:18

So the other day I, I was on site with a client, unbelievable area, where a client lives, and we went out to lunch and he's pointing out this country club and he is pointing out this gated community. And we get back to his office and we do a sales heat map. Right? And I just googled the zip codes of those same areas and like. You are not getting the market share you need to. Well, there are No. corporations there. I said, that's where all the CEOs live.

James Blain 32:47

Yeah, that's their house. I.

Ken Lucci 32:49

right. So figure out, I mean, go to the country club and say, you know what? We have many of your members use our service. We'd like all of your members to use our service as a member benefit. This is what we can do for you. Okay? but think about that. Oh, well, it's either that or spend three grand for PPC, right? So

James Blain 33:09

Well, but, but it's a different strategy, right? Because PPC is not gonna start that conversation.

Ken Lucci 33:16

it's gonna go broad. It's gonna go big and broad,

James Blain 33:19

we, are talking about, and I don't wanna go super deep in it 'cause this could be another episode, but you're talking about the difference between sales and marketing. We are, we are talking about building relationships. We're talking about taking it deeper. We're talking about leveraging what you have. Notice how in this entire episode, at no point have we gone, when you're competing with a TNC guys,

Ken Lucci 33:39

No.

James Blain 33:40

they should be on this level.

Ken Lucci 33:41

No.

James Blain 33:41

live on that level, and if you're not differentiating, providing a difference in service and marketing different things, look, if, if you're doing airport, it's hey. Do you wanna have the reliability, the peace of mind to know that someone's gonna be waiting, you're gonna look out the window, we'll help you look. This will be the most peace of mind you've ever had going to the airport,

Ken Lucci 34:02

Safest way to travel. Uh, who is traveling? Oh, it's my wife. It's my wife and daughter. Well, you've come to the right? place because this is the safest way. They're coming back at 11 o'clock at night. Can I recommend that? We, greet them inside the airport. Okay. But, but, so, You know, it, I, I, I just find that I also, I find that when I see this shit on Facebook, I also see. That it's almost like, um, it's a negative fest, Right. Everybody piles on. Oh yeah. You know, this was a tough quarter for airport travel. You know, we dug into this with a client and he had a tough first quarter for airport, and I said, see the problem? Your primary customer who does a million a year with you in the airport, they're half of what they were last year. What's going on? So what does he do? He calls them. He calls them. And, and the lady said, we've cut back on travel, for the following reason, for this first two quarters. It's temporary. Okay. But my whole point to him is, you don't have a problem. You're not, we're not losing airport as a market share. You have one situation with one client. My answer is create the constant sales machine.

James Blain 35:16

Right.

Ken Lucci 35:17

be presenting, Right. You remember the um, A, B, C, um. Always be closing. Glen Garry, Glen Ross, right. Best sales movie out there. Everybody. Glen Garry, Glen Ross. Go out and rent that movie. Alec Baldwin gives an unbelievable speech, right? A, B, C, always B. Closing to me, don't rest on your laurels. So if you notice that Mr. Lucci traveled with me last year 25 times, but I've not seen him recently. Don't be afraid to. Send him an email, an individual email, call him and say, listen, Mr. Lucci, we haven't seen you in a bit. can we help you out with any travel? Do you have an, any travel coming up? You know, being proactive increases, instead of waiting for the phone to ring, double and triple down. To me it's, it's, it's, it's natural stuff.

James Blain 36:11

but let's go back to something that came up in one of the very first episodes we ever did on this podcast and,

Ken Lucci 36:17

That was like what, seven years ago? Didn't we start this

James Blain 36:21

was like

Ken Lucci 36:21

seven years ago?

James Blain 36:22

or 50 now.

Ken Lucci 36:23

Did look at our producers, put an extra, Uh, he's put an addition on his house for Christ's sake. It's been like, has it been five years?

James Blain 36:30

I think he bought a new one, but no. So, so going back to that first episode, one of the things. That came up was there's nothing worse than if somebody has a negative or bad experience and they leave and you don't even notice. Right. I didn't even matter enough for you to notice that. I want, if you see that business starts going down and you call in on that customer and they say, well, we've got a downturn of us. Hey, not a problem. You know, it's always our number one goal is to take care of you, and we saw that you weren't booking as much. We wanna make sure that we're doing everything you can. To have the best experience. You know, we're sorry to hear that. The travel's going down. Is there anything that we can do so that when that comes back up or when that changes, we're ready to be a good partner for you?

Ken Lucci 37:16

Yep.

James Blain 37:17

Those types of things. Those types of check-ins. And then like I, we've said so much on this episode, keep in mind that you are not fighting for the same person that Uber is. You are not fighting for the same person that Lyft is,

Ken Lucci 38:38

No way.

James Blain 38:39

you have to do is you have to represent a different standard, a different level. And we haven't talked about it much,

Ken Lucci 38:45

More value, more value.

James Blain 38:47

right. When you get there, keep in mind they're gonna send the same vehicle that you are. I can get out, I can go into any airport I want. I can order a black SUV. But is that chauffeur going to be ready to help me? Are they outta the vehicle? Are they greeting me? Are they taking care of, am I going to have an experience to where that customer service, that safety, that envelope of comfort that I step into as soon as I start interacting with your company? Becomes such an experience for me that it ruins it for someone else. The best thing

Ken Lucci 39:21

Yep.

James Blain 39:21

do to lock down your business is provide an experience that is so fluid, that is so simple, that creates such peace of mind that when they go with someone else, when they go with TNC, even though it's more convenient, it's night and day to that person.

Ken Lucci 39:38

So we're, we're going all over the place on this, but I'll tell you the, the, the other piece of this puzzle is when someone calls in for a trip, what's the first thing you should ask? a, have you used us before?

James Blain 39:54

yeah.

Ken Lucci 39:55

No. Okay. Assume it's a no. Tell me something. Uh, I'm sorry. What's your first name? James?

James Blain 40:02

Here

Ken Lucci 40:02

no, it's James. James. James, right. James, tell me something. What, what did you do before this? Well, I used so-and-so and you know, we had some problems, listen. Uh, nothing against them, but tell me something. I wanna make sure that we take really good care of you. You said that they messed up with your boss. What happened? only so that you can understand don't commiserate and say they suck. Right. Only so you can understand.

James Blain 40:28

help me understand is one of my

Ken Lucci 40:30

right. Have, okay, so how did you hear about us? What did you do? What did you do before today? Right? And if they, if they, they say, you know, how, how did you hear about us? So we can figure out, you know, whether your marketing is actually working. That, that to me is you, you talk about digging where the gold is. There's no question in my mind that reservationists are not asking those questions. Right. Um, or if yes, I've used you before. Thank you so much for coming back. Thank you for, for, for using us again. Could I have your last name? Oh, I see that you travel with us in October. Terrific. What can I do for you today? and always try to sell the fries, try to turn the one transfer into the round trip, the round trip into the third leg. But I, I honestly do Not based on airline growth. And the growth in airline passengers, we have no shortage of people to sell that service to

James Blain 41:37

Not at all.

Ken Lucci 41:38

Airlines are growing at 4% domestically, 5% internationally, compounded, compounded every single year. Now, just to, to put that into perspective, the gross domestic product of the United States is growing at 2%, so. Airline. Passenger growth is a virtual hockey stick, so don't tell me that we can't compete. The answer is double down on your best clients. Double down on duplicating your best clients, making sure that you're going deep with your best clients, that everybody who travels is using you, Right. When was the last time you went into your best client? I don't care if you're a two car operator. When was the last time you went into your best client? And thank them by giving them something,

James Blain 42:27

Right.

Ken Lucci 42:28

Okay. At the end of the day, your sales job doesn't end. The first time you got 'em in the car, they need to know everything that you possibly do. Had another client calls me and says, very congratulatory, very happy with himself. He said, you know, I just took care of the president of such and such company. That was going to the Super Bowl. Was it New New Orleans. this year.

James Blain 42:53

New Orleans. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I'm Kansas City guy. that's, that's a rough one. We try to pretend that one didn't happen.

Ken Lucci 42:58

he said, I pulled a rabbit outta my hat. He said, I found an SUV coming over from Atlanta from, and they, my affiliate in Atlanta went over there and they're doing a 12 hour wait and return with my client. This new client that I have, I pulled a wrap. His EA was so. His executive assistant was so happy. I said, Okay. that's not your only win. That's the open door. Now, make sure he's happy. Check in with the affiliate. Make sure everything went well. Call the affiliate and say, listen, I'm gonna be out there this week. I wanna stop by for 10 minutes and give you something and drop something off. Whether it's your capability booklet, whether you send them an electronic capability brochure, make sure that they know everything you do and ask them for the rest of their damn business. So, I mean, he was happy as hell because he worked on this. He worked on getting that guy an SUV, he had to make about six calls. This guy is like tenacious, right? And it was a big ticket. Money was no fricking object because she couldn't do it. His ea, I mean, and, and. couldn't get it done. So this is a brand new client. What better way for you to get more business from them, for you? You've already got the calling card. Listen, Mary, I'm glad your boss is happy. Let me tell you. Pulling rabbits out of our hats, what we do every single day. Let me ask you a question. Who else travels in the company? I'd like to open a corporate account for you so I can give you best in class service anywhere you travel. So I, I, I, you know, Facebook, first of all, it annoys the shit outta me that all of the operators are sitting on Facebook rather than

James Blain 44:43

Oh,

Ken Lucci 44:43

if they,

James Blain 44:44

we, we can have a whole podcast, right? I, I can tell

Ken Lucci 44:46

and someday,

James Blain 44:47

and.

Ken Lucci 44:48

we'll,

James Blain 44:48

who

Ken Lucci 44:48

someday,

James Blain 44:49

have in this city? Is, is the bane of my existence, right?

Ken Lucci 44:52

oh yeah. Yeah.

James Blain 44:53

cares about the experience, cares about safety. When I book with a trans, when I book with a a car service, what I wanna know is that you went on Facebook and spent all of 30 seconds to shove me with the first guy that gave you a low price. That makes me feel good, but,

Ken Lucci 45:06

So it's,

James Blain 45:07

episode,

Ken Lucci 45:08

look, and I, it comes back to what we talked about in in another episode, which is it's not the market, it's your mindset. Okay, because I can tell you something, the top 1% of the people in this country that shop at the best jewelers, that dine at the best restaurants in your market, that shop at the best local stores, they are not. Taking Uber to and from the airport at four o'clock in the morning. I know, because I read their analyst reports and they lament the fact that they are growing in the $20, 20 minute rides like crazy. By the way, by the way, you know where they're growing the most? Uber. X. Uber X, you know, it's the, they, they are saturated the low price, but you know, where they're not growing is the Uber black market. They have more capacity, but they are literally not growing in the airport space. They lament it on every call and when you think about it. There's no way they can guarantee that, driver's gonna be out at four o'clock. If I'm an Uber black driver, I'm not getting up at four o'clock in the morning for what An $80 trip? I'm gonna get 60% of that. I mean, by the time I pay for the gas to get 45 minutes out of the city,

James Blain 46:23

Not, not only that what happens when he cancels?

Ken Lucci 46:26

Right

James Blain 46:27

I, I can tell you, I have been, there was a point in time when, every time I went to Las Vegas, right? Everybody, the big thing in Las Vegas is they were dealing with issues of, you'd order an Uber, it'd be across town. It would cancel, it'd never show up. Then you'd have to book a new one. Then nobody wants to deal with that at that hour. I, I will tell you, I don't, I don't know that there's a better way to leave this other than this is your door to get into the rest of the business. And I think as an operator, you have to understand that you are not competing with the TNC. You do not want the same pastor he wants. And if you cannot differentiate yourself from the tcs, even their black or their premium, or their top level tier, if you can't find a different way to differentiate, you are missing the point. I, I don't know, Ken. I don't know that there's a better way to leave it than that.

Ken Lucci 47:14

No, one. One final thought. One of my favorite people in the entire industry who shall go remain nameless. Said to me that he gets frustrated because people will call him. for a price

James Blain 47:28

No,

Ken Lucci 47:28

then they won't go with him, and then the next morning at three o'clock in the morning or four o'clock in the morning, they're waking him up. Right. So I said to him, you need to develop a strategy find out the who, what, where, and when, and why of how often they travel. And, oh, your price is too high. What are you comparing us to? Oh, Uber, you know what? We don't compete with Uber. And you know what? some people tell me that we are, I know we're higher price. Some people tell me that they compare us to Uber, but those are the same people that usually call me the day after because the Uber driver hasn't shown up. We have redundant vehicles, redundant drivers, background check drivers.

James Blain 48:06

the value before you give the price,

Ken Lucci 48:08

yes.

James Blain 48:09

out to my partner Bruce on that. He talked about

Ken Lucci 48:11

oh yeah.

James Blain 48:12

very early on. Build the value before you give the price. 'cause

Ken Lucci 48:17

and don't accept no

James Blain 48:19

it's just gonna throw a number out,

Ken Lucci 48:21

and, and don't accept no say, you know, give them the best price you can based on Round Trip. If you open a corporate account with me, if, listen, if somebody says to you, oh, you're too high price, you're, you're much higher than an Uber and they're coming in and outta your city once a year, don't worry about it. You don't need them anyway. right? He's not your guy. but if you know, if you know that he's with such and such a corporation or he lives in a wealthy area and he's a frequent traveler, do the best you can. This is the best I can do. If if you book a round trip with me, and here's the promise I make for you. 15 minutes before the appointed time, look out your window. The vehicle's gonna be there, we guarantee on time performance. So it's not the market. It's the mindset. It's not your price, it's the perspective and, the value that you can build. Don't give up on airport. If you give up on airport, you are, you are literally saying, we're not going to, deliver the milk and bread. They're not gonna come into your store. That's the way I look at it.

James Blain 49:19

and, and Ken, let me ask you something, because this just, we're in this marketing mindset. I gotta tell you, if I was in the business today, I would also be looking at bundling and say, Hey, no, I, I totally understand. Let me ask you, what are you doing for transportation when you get there and you get back? Because

Ken Lucci 49:35

Right.

James Blain 49:35

your transportation to the airport, now we can

Ken Lucci 49:38

Yep.

James Blain 49:39

care of you when you arrive in your destination. We can get you back

Ken Lucci 49:41

Yep.

James Blain 49:41

We can get you back home. You know, if we'd like, if we can set up all four of those trips for you right now,

Ken Lucci 49:46

We're gonna do all the tracking. Yep.

James Blain 49:48

where I'm going with this? You see where I'm going with this?

Ken Lucci 49:51

It's one secured credit card transaction. We're gonna track every single leg of this trip, and by the way. I invite, go ahead and call Google Call. Call. The best guys on Google that are in that city, we actually have, they're part of the best ones, are in our affiliate network. we have the best prices in town. We're gonna, the most important thing, it's one secured transaction. We're gonna track you, they're gonna be waiting for you at the airport. It's the safest way, especially if You find out it's a female travel, a female executive. It's, it's the wife.

James Blain 50:21

or

Ken Lucci 50:21

The wife, and.

James Blain 50:24

Look it, it's counterintuitive to think that, Hey, you know, how would I get it by going up? But again, you are not going for the cost there. You're going for the value. Right, and so I think that's where we'll leave it for this one is understand that it's an open door, it's value. Again, highlight of our week. Thank you so much for listening. Um, if you haven't already, you can go to ground transportation podcast.com, subscribe to us there. Obviously Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever your favorite social media platform. And very easy. You can search us there on a ground transportation podcast on all of those platforms. And, uh, for myself. Thank you for joining. Ken. Any closing words that you wanna leave him with?

Ken Lucci 51:04

Listen, you know, some say we're overplayed, James, but I say, I say we are the best continuing education in the industry. We don't charge you a hotel fee, we don't charge you for a conference ticket. It's the best continuing education in the industry, and, uh, I, I'm, I'm happy to do it with? you every Friday.

James Blain 51:26

It's, it's a pleasure. I can't think of anyone. I'd rather do this with Ken. Thank you everyone so much for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.

51:34

Thank you for listening to the ground transportation podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX training.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, Go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the ground transportation podcast.